This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Putin's Groupies Versus Stalin's

The barrage of anti-Putin rhetoric that fills the Western air-waves and written media would be almost useless to the powers that be without the demonizing of those who support him across the world.

Yesterday, a US representative on MSNBC inadvertently referred to ‘Russia’ as ‘The Soviet Union’. Whether it was deliberate or a slip of the tongue, the remark shows that anti-Russian propaganda piggybacks comfortably on decades of Anti-Soviet propaganda. But recognizing this only scratches the surface of a dangerous trend: the conflating of individuals who believe Putin is the main adult in the room with traitors, harking back to the days when the American Communist Party supported Joseph Stalin.

In the fifties, Nikita Khruschev denounced Stalin’s crimes in a celebrated speech. More recently, the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a monument to be built in Moscow commemorating Stalin’s victims - something the US has yet to do with respect to slavery. Yet Americans who defend Putin’s policies are viciously attacked, largely, I believe, because the American public has no notion of history.

The Russian Revolution was did not emerge full-blown from nothing. It followed decades of revolutionary and reformist campaigns against the Tsarist regime among Russian writers and other intellectuals. Based on the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, among others, it posited that if the 99% were empowered instead of the 1%, the Russian people would be better off.

Reams were written to support this claim, but once power had been taken from the Tsar and handed to the ‘Soviets’ or peoples’ councils, the leaders of the revolution realized that the aristocrats and capitalists were not going to take their losses lying down. A five year civil war between ‘White Russia’ and the Communists (or ‘Reds’ ) ensued, backed by the West.

(This is not going to be a history of the Russian Revolution. I’m merely setting the stage for the thesis of this article.) Russia emerged from four years of war against Germany alongside the Allied Powers, and an additional five years of civil war to confront its first two challenges: the redistribution of land from large owners to poor, largely illiterate peasants, and the gigantic task of turning a vast, largely agrarian society into a modern, developed country.

American progressives realized that this was a tall order for any government, and were inclined to make allowances for the brutality with which Stalin ruled in the name of the revolution’s promise of equity. However, temporary cooperation with ‘Uncle Joe’ against Hitler in no way changed Washington’s deep-seated hostility to the system Stalin managed, and almost as soon as the war was over, American progressives were hunted, fired and ostracized by the House un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Fast forward to today, when a growing number of Americans are literally in despair over their government’s behavior, whether vis a vis minorities at home or in foreign policy. While no discriminatory action has as yet been taken against them, they are justifiably cautious about voicing their opinion, bearing in mind the fate of government whistle-blowers such as Chelsea Manning, and the impossibility for Edward Snowden to return to his country of birth without risking a life sentence for treason.

And yet, I see a very big difference between those who during the life of the Soviet Union were labelled ‘fellow travelers’, (those who, while not members of the Communist Party, supported the Russian Revolution”), and those who today consider that Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy makes more sense than that of their own government.

Americans who supported the Soviet Union did so because they believed it was a good idea to put power in the hands of the 99%, and they hoped similar events would take place in the United States. (At that time, most Americans still worked a 40 hour week and there was no such thing as time off if you had a baby.) If the Soviet experiment was a failure would imply that the 1% would always be in power everywhere, a fate too awful to accept. Many progressives heard only the positive reports from that faraway land, or believed Stalin’s exactions must somehow be justified.

The situation with Vladimir Putin’s Russia is very different. Twenty-four seven tv and internet news make a significant number of people around the world aware of the major events played out daily across the planet. Although Americans could be much better informed, they are increasingly aware that their government tends to shoot first and ask questions later. And that it is official policy that no other country can be permitted to become as powerful as we are.

Although Vladimir Putin’s speeches are not published in extenso - any more than Obama’s - Americans do get a glimpse of his behavior on the world stage. And gradually, as for many other people around the world, it is becoming painfully clear to them that this foreign leader makes a lot more sense than their own. People around the world who have come to support Putin do not do so because they are being fed Russian propaganda, as those who supported Joseph Stalin were. They are infinitely more able to judge the Russian president for themselves than anyone was able judge Stalin, either inside or outside of the Soviet Union.

Thus, the big difference between Putin’s groupies and Stalin’s is that the former have the wherewithal to think for themselves, while the latter did not, and hence could only rely on the Party line. If they come together, it is because they recognize each other across time and space, not because they are members of a monolithic group. Those who support Putin’s approach to international affairs do so because they can see that it makes sense. Seventy years after the founding of the UN, the Russian president wants the world to abide by its charter, in letter and in spirit, while Washington has for decades disparaged both.

President Obama’s assurances that we go to war to protect civilians from their evil governments are as specious as George Bush’s assertions that we went to war to bring democracy to the world. Now the dance over what to do about ISIS contrasts so vividly with US assertions of strength that Americans don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Unquestioning patriots condemn their government for being unable to beat the other side: thoughtful Americans condemn it for not hearing the other side. Slowly, they are coming to the conclusion that the aims of the 1% are so nefarious that no amount of common sense thinking about right and wrong would change official American behavior. How could they not look to Putin, who takes every opportunity to insist, even when he feels compelled to act, that differences between nations must be sorted out through negotiation, not war?

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Welcome to Otherjones!

As announced a month ago, henceforth I will post all my blogs here, abandoning websites that support their editors, but not their writers. I'm looking for thirty readers willing to contribute $10 a month each. They will receive an article every day in their inbox.

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’, as Chris Hedges puts it, may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

My goal is to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.
Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN did nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons
why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover, getting a unique window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who never appear on our own msm.

I intend to try, insofar as my time permits, to signal news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own, many of which are significant.